Different devices for reloading electronic franking systems with funds from a remote authorization centre, ensuring that reloading of funds cannot be effected fraudulently or accidentally, already exist. Such a device is disclosed for example in French Patent No. 86 05588 and European Patent No. 0 207 492 which respectively describe an electronic security module and a smart card allowing the exchange of information by physical transport between an electronic franking system and an authorization centre, principally with a view to allowing the electronic system to be reloaded with funds.
In a variant described in French Patent No. 85 10081, the afore-mentioned module is replaced by a telephone line which allows this exchange of information in both directions without any physical displacement, such information being, of course, suitably encoded in order to avoid any error or fraud.
The secured module or the telephone line advantageously allow, on the one hand, the sending of directives from the remote authorization centre to the electronic franking systems and, on the other hand, the transfer of communication statements from a memory of the franking system towards the remote authorization centre. Such directives include in particular instructions defining the conditions of producing the communication statements intended to allow the Postal Service better to delimit operation of the electronic franking systems. It is known from the second document cited that such instructions concern the number, capacity and frequency (generally monthly) of the statements of communication counters located in the memory of an electronic franking system. The number of communication counters is in particular a function of the franking tariffs, each counter being associated with a range of franking values.
Now, the information obtained from these communication counters does not allow the Postal Service to reconstitute the postal traffic corresponding to the different electronic franking systems for a mode of dispatch or specific category of mail. This is why Applicants proposed in French Patent No. 91 15906 a device allowing a detailed breakdown as a function of a mode of dispatch or a specific category of mail, from the franking values alone.
This device for statistically following up the postal traffic which, in practice, gives satisfaction and, in addition, is sufficient to identify the various modes of dispatch or mail categories most currently used, proves to be inefficient when it is question of broadening such follow-up to all the postal products delivered by the Postal Service. Now, there are several hundreds of such products among which the Postal Service distinguishes postal products classified as “priority” (i.e. of which the Postal Service wishes to know the corresponding franking amounts regularly) from secondary postal products (in which the Postal Service is also interested, but to a lesser degree than the former ones).
The present invention has for its object to allow a statistical follow-up of the different postal products franked by a user of an electronic franking system whatever their number and by monitoring principally among these different postal products the follow-up of the so-called priority and secondary postal products.